12/90 Misc. Newsletter

MILLI VANILLA FRAUDS?

NEXT THEY’LL CLAIM ARCHIE AND JUGHEAD

DIDN’T SING THEIR SONGS!

Here at Misc., we’re holding a public wake for the 50-year-old Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge (known henceforth as Galloping Gertie II), which reached the end of its life “span” with a bang, not a whimper. Before the sinking, it had become a mile-long, 40-foot-wide construction/demolition project, strewn with a few scattered cars and Honey Buckets. It already looked like it was about to sink (something Boris S. Wart threatened but never accomplished on the J.P. Patches show). (Event info on other side.)

OUT WITH THE OLD, PLEASE!: Nostalgia is going to be the death of America. Every previous fad added something to the national heritage, for good or ill. Nostalgia only subtracts. It boils the flavor and texture away from our past, leaving a gooey syrup of vague memories. It’s getting harder and harder to find a restaurant, store, or beauty salon where the sound system plays any recent music. “Square” places play top 40 hits of 1956-69. “Hip” places play hipper music from that same era (Muddy Waters instead of the Beatles). Only in designer-jean stores can you hear songs by groups whose members are all still alive. And many of them take pride in never playing a single riff that isn’t reorganized Led Zeppelin.

ADDITIONALLY, I’m finding it harder and harder to explain to people that I’m neither (1) a nostalgist for the hippie era nor (2) a conservative. I regard hippie-era politics as a well-intentioned failure. The progressive, populist side of American leftist tradition got smothered by what we might as well call a bohemian aesthetic. There will never be a real left in this country until it stops depicting all working-class people as “the unwashed masses,” as hicks and flaming fascists. The world is not the few enlightened “Us” vs. all the ignorant “Them.” It’s all of “Us.”

NORTHERN REVOLT: The Canadian subsidiary of Popsicle Brands is under vocal attack from children from Victoria, BC (Mile 0 of the Trans-Canada Highway) to St. John’s, Newfoundland (the other Mile 0). According to the Vancouver Sun, the company promised free Nintendo cartridges to kids sending in 15,000 points’ worth of Popsicle sticks; instead, 10,000 kids got only letters of apology claiming that the company’s stock of 6,000 cartridges had been depleted and that substitute prizes would be given to everybody else sometime next year. Still, maybe the kiddie Canucks ought to be grateful to get even that; in a famous mid-’80s essay, Ontario’s ownMargaret Atwood wrote of growing up with Popsicle labels offering wonderful prizes but bearing the fine-print disclaimer, “Offer Good Only in U.S.”

NO FREUDIAN COMMENTS, PLEASE: A staffer at King County Juvenile Hall reports that teenage boys inside there are signifying their gang membership by affixing Dole or Chiquita banana stickers onto their belts.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Manna Raisins & Oat Bran Flakes cereal, made in Delta, B.C. and “sprouted for life.” It’s “Certified Organic,” but (oddly, considering the name) isn’t certified kosher.

IS NOBODY INCORRUPT?: The Wall St. Journal (10/29) reports that the Doris Day Animal Fund Inc. spends 90 percent of its income on direct-mail fundraising (billed in official budget statements as “public education”).

AD VERBS: Rainier Light’s “It’s R Light” commercials are much better than the previous ad agency’s work, but they’re still hollow compared to the classic Heckler Associates spots, and for the same reason. While the Heckler ads had real fun in promoting the beer as a beverage for enjoyment, both of its successor agencies fell into the trap of selling a target audience on an image of itself, with the product merely a supporting player in the drama.

NO MORE FUR AT NORDSTROM: This is how an industry dies, when the first PR-conscious retailer proudly capitulates to public furor (and flat market shares). But fur is more than an inefficient source of outerwear; it’s one reason we’re here. The trapping of wild fur animals was the first white industry in the Northwest. The Hudson’s Bay Co. and others subsidized many of the first non-military settlements in Washington Territory. They were supported by sales to the society ladies of Europe, whose essential financial contribution was totally ignored in last year’s books on women in Northwest history.

SAY IT AIN’T SO RUMOR OF THE MONTH: Is the Comet Tavern going to be upscaled?

(latter-day note: It wasn’t.)

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (Times, 11/14): “A story of 4 kids and how they died/`Anybody who has a teen-ager will related to this’ tale of tragedy.” Now that’s headline writing in the classic manner, almost Victorian in its cadence.

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: It’s a shame that The Facts has such ugly design and typography, because some truly eloquent African-American voices may be found there. For example, hear the bitter “Life Among the Thorns” edition of F. Justina Nubay’s column “Say It With Flowers”: “I wholeheartedly believe that Thanksgiving should continue to be the only day when public spirited people ply the hungry with turkeys, pies, and other filling foods, enough to last them the entire year. Like the howling hyena, the hungry and the homeless, for the time remaining, should continue to gorge themselves on carrion and roam their jungles in wild anguish.”…At Cause is a Christian paper with a difference: A Reubenesque nude drawing on the front page, an essay titled “Party On!” saying it’s OK for Christians to “have exhilaration, ecstasy, bliss” — including being gay and/or transvestite if they wish to be so. (Editor M.F. Whealen seems to be an ex-Scientologist, from the use of certain catch phrases.)…The Oregon-based Sinsemilla Tipsmagazine folds after 10 years. Publishers blame the War on Drugs, which they claim has made people scared to sell or advertise in the mag.

CATHODE CORNER: Does the rash of inside jokes on The Simpsons (Marge’s surprise at “a Simpson on a T-shirt,” the on-air homage to Bart’s Macy parade balloon, his chalkboard message “I am not a 32-year-old woman”) mean the show has passed its peak?…A producer has paid millions for all rights to The Ed Sullivan Show; plans to release several video compilations, including the censored TV debuts by famous rockers and a tape of 50 different people doing the Twist. But will they ever include the peg-legged tap dancer, or the National Model Race Car Championship? (A licensed version of Sullivan’s most popular feature, the puppet mouse Topo Gigio, now appears in Spanish on cable’s Univision.)

KRIME KORNER: A Seattle man was fatally shot by an unlicensed Safeway security guard for allegedly pocketing a pack of cigarettes. Now will you listen to me about the dangers of smoking?… The Martinsburg, W.Va. city council plans to require panhandlers to buy $25 licenses or face jail terms. But how do you get the money to tell people you don’t have any money?

MALLED DOWN: The National Endowment for the Arts gave a $50,000 grant (with a 2/1 matching requirement) to the Rouse Co. to sponsor non-threatening art programs in shopping centers (including Westlake Center). Now we know the true priorities of new NEA head John Frohnmayer. He’s using “bringing art to the people” and corporate matching-fund requirements as ways of rewarding works acceptable to business/marketing interests.

PRESSED: Our news media, presuming us all to be beer-swilling xenophobes, devoted their attention on 11/22-23 to how nothing had really happened in the Persian Gulf lately, and only cursorily mentioned that the last major European dictator fell from power. The beginning of the end might have been foretold in an item from USA Today (11/12): “Richard Needham, British minister for Northern Ireland, apologized for calling Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a “cow” during a car-phone call to his wife. A paramilitary group in Northern Ireland picked up the call on a radio monitor and sent a recording of it to a news agency.”…What they didn’t tell you about the female, Socialist, pro-contraception Irish president is that the position is largely ceremonial, a sort of elected king. She will be less able to take political stances than when she was in the Irish senate.

SECTION BEE: The Killer Bees may finally be on our way! (Times, 11/3) It turns out that they’re not really that much more vicious to humans, but they are less tameable and they do drive out domesticated breeds.

XMAS GIFT OF THE YEAR: The Dance Aerobics game cartridge by our Redmond neighbors at Nintendo. You can vicariously experience the self-punishment and body-consciousness of aerobics without having to actually do the exercises. It’s one of only two games I’ve seen with a female lead character…. The Trivial Pursuit ’80s Edition is historically inaccurate. It’s got a question about Saturday Night Live’s Mr. Bill, who was on from ’77 to ’80….Lynnwood’s Pacific Trading Cards is drawing national attention for itsAndy Griffith Show card set….Trump: The Game (“It’s Whether You Win”) was marked down from $39.95 to $19.90….Seattle’sGenerra has a “Men’s Collective” shirt line, for junior execs old enough to remember their student-Maoist pasts (they’re even made in the PRC!).

MORE VEGETARIANS IN LEATHER: The Vancouver rockmag Discorder sez the next big thing’s “straight-edge rock,” punk-like bands (including Seattle’s Undertow) who belong to the Hare Krishna movement. Their premise: Just as punk stripped rock of impurities and distractions, so should we do with our lives.

PHILM PHIRE: Remains from the blaze at Universal Studios (soon to be owned by Panasonic) soon became a major attraction on the Universal Tour; the simulated “burning building” attraction was temporarily closed. The sale of Universal/MCA leaves Time Warner as the last major US-owned record company. It also brings Japanese money into US publishing (MCA owns Putnam, Berkley and Ace).

NOT IN STORE: You won’t get to shop this Xmas at B.N. Genius, that land of expensive electronic playthings that you’d never buy but always loved to play with in the store. Meanwhile, the end of the Northgate Woolworth leaves only the downtown store as an inexpensive source for hats, socks, and hobby supplies, not to mention the long shelf of cheesy crossword magazines. (It’s also one of the last places still selling Clark candy bars.)

PICK A PEC: The 11/24 Newsweek (the same issue with the essay that claimed that “Cynicism is alien to America”) reported that trendy LA men are now getting silicone implants to make their upper bodies look more muscular. Look dudes, this recent interest in “men reclaiming the feminine side of their natures” ought to mean taking up the smart things about womanhood; just as women’s assertiveness training generally excludes lessons in beer-swilling or sexual harassment.

WE’LL TALK AGAIN in the palindromic year of 1991 (that year which picky purists insist is the real start of the decade), when I’ll count exactly how many times you could have seen It’s A Wonderful Life this holiday season. Until then, watch the astounding South Africa Now 12:30 p.m. Saturdays on KCTS, try to avoid calling the NY Times crossword-help 900 line, appreciate the appropriateness of the big Marilyn Monroe mural inside the Broadway Pay ‘n Save (shouldn’t all drugstores bear the images of people who died from prescription overdoses?), read The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, pray for snow, work for peace, and consider the words of Frank Zappa on unauthorized musical sampling: “It’s just so cheese-oid.”

NOTICE

Sign at the Wood Shop, Pioneer Square: “Authentic East German nutcrackers. Last chance. Buy now or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

REPORT

It’s been threatened before, but now it’s really gonna happen. I’m holding two live readings this month: Sun., 12/16, at the Two Bells Tavern (10 p.m.) and Wed., 12/19, at the Rendezvous (7 and 9 p.m., with vintage educational films). Each show contains at least some different material; each is a partial benefit for my Perfect Couple novel publication fund. (The novel is still available only on Mac disks, for $6.)

Subscribers may notice a new mailing-label design. My old label program crashed (thank God and Apple I could retrieve the data with the ResEdit program).

WORD-O-MONTH

“Vituperative”

10/90 Misc. Newsletter

CONNIE CHUNG AND MAURY POVICH:

STOP THEM BEFORE THEY BREED!

It’s time for the big reunification Oktoberfest and time to welcome you back to Misc., the pop-culture newsletter that still wants to know why certain teen and especially pre-teen boys consider male singers with long hair and high voices to be “real men” but dismiss male singers with predominantly female followings as pansies (musical qualities or lack of same being equal). I’m sorry that I had to cut my long Bill Cullen obituary from last month’s issue; the salient point was about finding (at Fillippi’s Old Books) a cheap LP of old show tunes “hosted” by Cullen, shown in a tuxedo on the cover in a dancing pose (from the waist up). A peculiar pose for the game show host who, due to a polio limp, preferred never to be shown walking on stage.

LAME: The long-rumored demise of Longacres at the hands of a land-hungry Boeing, and with it the possible demise of horse racing in Seattle and possibly the Northwest (would the Portland, Spokane and Yakima tracks survive the end of their bigger sibling?), would sadden several subscribing friends of Misc. It’s more than a gambling ritual (albeit one with much better odds than the Lottery). It’s a way of life, for bettors and trainers and riders. (Activists have questioned how great a life it is for the horses, but how well are most non-star athletes treated?)

ALSO IN THE END-O-ERA DEPT.: Twenty years ago, before Tower or Peaches came to town, the prime record store in the U District was Music Street, which became in turn Wide World of Music, Musicland, and finally Discount Records. This store was finally closed in mid-September, following the end of Nordstrom and Jay Jacobs’ Ave outlets. By this time, the top 40 hits that thrived at Music Street had become the nostalgia CDs that Discount Records could not stock or promote as well as other chains could.

DEAD AIR: The recently-publicized payola scandal, in which the Big-6 record labels hired a network of “independent” promoters to pay off radio stations with cash and drugs and hookers, affirms the “radio sucks” attitude of the punk era, the complaints then and now of great songs, even great accessible songs, being buried while hyped-up pablum and soft-rock dinosaurs obtained undeserved hits.

FLAHERTY NEWSPAPERS, R.I.P.: For 30 hellish months, I worked for sub-survival wages with past-death-rate typesetting equipment in Flaherty headquarters, a crumbling shack in the Rainier Valley with weeds rising from cracks in the concrete floor. There, I typed up the alleged “news” sections of seven neighborhood weeklies — smarmy hype stories for advertising merchants, cutesy notices for Catholic schools, a gardening column by an elderly lady who occasionally inserted anti-sex-education sermons, and, always and above all, unquestioned enthusiasm for the Seattle Police. I typed up too many of the squalid police-blotter columns (low-grade tragedy turned into morbid sensationalism), and to this day I lash back at anyone who refers to them as a source of camp humor. The papers were distributed by an ever-changing crew of pre-teens who had to deliver them to every house in a territory and hope some of the recipients would pay the small voluntary fee. Now, the little chain has been bought by an out-of-state takeover artist and will soon be merged with its onetime arch-rival Murray Publishing.

PHILM PHACTS: So far, no major Twin Peaks second-season filming locally. Generally, Seattle continues to be eclipsed in film activity by B.C. and Oregon. Paramount, for instance, has become the second established production company proposing to open a permanent studio in Portland. There can only be one potential logo for such an enterprise: A ring of stars surrounding the remains of Mt. St. Helens.

IS IT THE SHOES?: The Nike boycott by Black activists and the corporate culture of that company (U of O track vets and ex-hippies) are integrally related to the white-bread demographics of that whole-grain-eating city of Portland. That’s where Bill Walton was kept on the TrailBlazers payroll through years of injuries because, some say, laid-back mellow Oregonians would only support a basketball team if it had a white star. The famed progressive politics of Oregon have lately meant stands on environmental, nuclear, and foreign-affairs issues, soft-pedalling the social justice causes that the Left used to be all about. One good sign: The Oregonian has become the only NW daily with a Black editor-in-chief.

STILL MORE FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER: Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon was charged with scratching a huge geometric pattern in a southeast Oregon desert. The whole thing looked, in news photos, remarkably like those mysterious “field circles” popping up along the English countryside. Maybe some international neo-Druid outfit is making these things and letting people believe they’re the work of spirits or UFOs or such. Maybe he just thought it would look neat…A Portland district judge is trying to keep his job, after he was revealed to have married wife #2 while still wed to #1.

CATHODE CORNER: American Chronicles utilizes artsy highbrow camera work to record the quirky rituals of lowbrow American primitives. In short, it’s a modern Spaghetti western not made by Europeans but perhaps for them. It looks like something really commissioned for Murdoch’s European satellite network……The Pentagon is partly funding Zenith’s research into hi-definition TV, according to a syndicated item in Puget Sound Computer News. Arguably, there might be military applications to more sophisticated video transmission and display systems, perhaps for radar or navigational systems. But essentially we’ve got our government subsidizing private industry, something that happens in every capitalist country but which is often considered a sacrilege to the “American free enterprise system.” What does Zenith think it is, a bank or a basketball team? (In one of his last books, BTW,Buckminster Fuller claimed that “free enterprise” religion was originally a 1776-era reaction to the colonial system of British crown-chartered commerce.)

OUTSIDE PITCHES: It’s hard not to stare incredulously at the Coors commercial with African-American activists working hard to refurbish a storefront community center, then celebrating the job by downing the Beer of Bigots…More songs in commercials: TheHair theme in a shampoo spot; Starship’s “We Built This City” becoming ITT’s “We Built This Company”…From the cable commercial for the compilation CD Those Fabulous ’70s: “Sorry, not available on 8-track”…Advertisers on one page of the Weekly’s 9/26 “adult education” supplement: Cornish College, Griffin College, UW Extension, and The Crypt (“20% Off All Ladies Leather”).

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Cookie Bowl I (that’s the roman numeral “one”) is a line of cookies in the relief shapes of NFL team helmets (for non-fans, it’s the Cleveland Browns who get royalty checks on the blank helmets). Available in chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, and shortbread. But beware: They’re intensely male-oriented.

NO FREE RE-FILLINGS: Espresso Dental on Phinney Ridge is almost certainly the first combined coffeehouse and dental clinic in the nation (neck and back massages are also available). Do the lattes come with spit cups?

ON THE STREETS: I survived the biggest assemblage of preteen females in Seattle history, or at least in 25 years: The clean-cut, T-shirt-wearing devotees crowding their way into the Kingdome for the New Kids on the Block concert. That, and the accompanying traffic jam of Bellevue-based station wagons, made the September gallery walk a true navigational challenge. I did not notice the Kidfans directly interacting with the regular art-crawling Pioneer Squares. Had the galleries planned for this confluence of audiences, a little art-ed event might have rescued a few young consumers from a life of plastic culture. Then again, considering some of the works that were hung in those spaces…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Northwest Network (“Seattle’s Community Newspaper,” though it’s made in Kirkland) is the latest attempt at a serious-progressive local tabloid. The emphasis here is on analysis, re-interpreting the information given by the regular news media. (Seattle Subtext, still publishing after three months, gives you new news on international topics. There’s still nothing here like the Portland Free Press, doing original local investigative reporting.) Still, the presence of another competently written and produced paper, out every two weeks, is a hopeful sign that people are out there wanting to do things.

UNDERGROUND NEWS: The po-mo, engineered-by-committee bus tunnel turns out to be a visual masterpiece, comprising five waiting areas that any corporation would be proud to have as its office-tower lobby. It’s a blast to visit and to ride through. It’s a monument to the pretentions of today’s Seattle, one of those self-conscious boasts of “becoming a world class city.” It’s more successful as a meeting place and art project than as a transportation solution. Amenities sorely lack (subway stations with no newsstands? Unthinkable!). The lack of restrooms was a deliberate decision, by officials who prefer that the homeless relieve themselves in streets and alleys. The whole expensive thing tore up downtown traffic for four years and clearly was meant to appease bus-hating affluent commuters. Most buses running through it (starting next year) will be suburban routes (the reason for the specially built coaches that run on electricity in the tunnel but on diesel on highways and bridges). The layout of the tunnel (just slightly longer than the Monorail) was designed to move buses quickly onto I-5, I-90 and SR 520, not to get them around the city. What we oughta have is a light rail system like our filmmaking cities to the north and south.

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (NY Times story on the new Germany, 9/25): “Bitterness Sears the Die-Hard Nationalists.” I knew the NY papers were hard up for advertising, but selling sneak mentions in news headlines?

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF A NATION’S COLLAPSE II: As of 10/3, no longer will the Dresden area, heretofore the only part of E. Germany unable to watch Dallas on W. German TV, be known as the Valley of Those Who Know Little.

YOU CALL THAT A FUTURE?: The Puget Sound Council of Governments, an agency whose own future is in peril, released a fancy public report predicting the look of the region in 2020. There are unspecified “rapid transit” systems between downtown and the burbs, and lotsa reclaimed greenbelts; but nowhere the ring of giant plastic-domed cities predicted in ’62 at the Century 21 Exposition…My cyberpunk contacts were outraged at the 9/3 Time mag’s goofy-human-interest piece about a UW-designed virtual reality machine (a computer-video unit in which you can pretend to fly over Seattle by “steering” with an electronic glove). These guys are adamant about making artificial experience work, even if early experiments like this have bugs to be worked out.

AT B-SHOOT: Rumors of the Big Wave found their so-politically-correct-it’s-painful music on the Miller Mainstage, sponsored by an affiliate of Phillip Morris Companies, best friend of the art-world and civil-rights enemy Jesse Helms. “Boycott Miller/Helms = Death” stickers were, however, plastered throughout the Coliseum. And for next year, remember the big sign at the Bumbershoot 1st aid tent: “Sorry. We cannot give out aspirin.”

‘TIL THE MUCH COOLER MONTH (God, I hope) of November, be sure to visit the peace vigil at Gas Works (NOT a quaint relic of the ’60s but people trying to make sure we have a future), watch the new Graham Kerr Show taped at KING, avoid the recently-named conditions “Nintendo thumb” and “espresso maker’s wrist,” and save the junk-mail foil envelope containing a card drenched inNeutron Industries’ mail-order citrus scent spray. The cards are great playthings for cats.

PASSAGE

Lawrence Durrell in the Alexandria Quartet: “Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time, not by our personalities as we would like to think. Thus, every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the position is changed.”

REPORT

It’s a year since Misc. became a self-contained newsletter; charter subscribers (you ought to know who you are) need to renew. Fax subscriptions to Misc. are now for $9 per year. The space at the bottom of this page is still available for advertising. Leave a message at 323-4081 or 524-1967 for details.

I’m also raising funds to self-publish my seemingly endlessly-announced novel The Perfect Couple. Any and all ideas welcome.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Esconce”

8/90 Misc. Newsletter

BUY A PEPSI (OFFICIAL GOODWILL GAMES POP)

FROM THE QFC (OFFICIAL STORE)

IN NORTHGATE (OFFICIAL MALL)

Time for all first, second, and third-generation Hanford mutants to settle down with a refreshing glass of cherry-flavored iodine and the August edition of Misc., the pop-culture report that could spend its lagging mental energy thinking about important things, but instead is obsessed with the strange case of the Miss Washington who’s really from Oregon. Portland’s Lynnae Thurik, 26, claims to be a pageant-legal Washingtonian because her ad-sales job for a little Oregon magazine includes a few accounts in Vancouver, Wash. The obvious angle: Are Washington women really less pretty than Oregon women, or just too smart for this sort of thing?

MARK MCDONALD R.I.P.: He died very suddenly. His Spkn Wrds productions, experimental works with unpaid actors, played before no more than 60 people per show. Yet they proved very influential in both the local theatrical and literary communities. He brought people of disparate disciplines together, something this town needs much more of. Several times after something didn’t work right, he threatened to shut down the series. In the end, only a horrible virus ended his work.

PUMPED DRY: Weeks before environmentalists charged that Seattle drivers used the dirtiest gas in the nation, Shell Oil, the Euro-based giant whose U.S. operation began here with a one-pump filling station on Eastlake, selling its last 55 Puget Sound stations to Texaco as of next January. (Folks who grew up in other states have fond memories of plastic coins of U.S. presidents Shell used to give out in some contest that, for some reason, was illegal in Washington.) The sale leaves the local gas market with only six majors (Chevron, Unocal 76, Exxon, BP, Texaco, Arco) and two minor chains (Time/Jackpot and the ironically-named Liberty, Arco’s new off-brand). Of the remaining brands, only Exxon and Unocal don’t have a refinery in Washington; will they be next to go?

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF A NATION’S COLLAPSE: With German unity, we have to say goodbye to the funky East German Ostmark money (pictures of smoke-belching factories and quaint technicians in lab coats). But now Easterners can enjoy such tastes of freedom as Nonstop-Ratzel, the West German magazine that combines two of the world’s most popular editorial elements: (1) pictures of topless women, and (2) crossword puzzles.

CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING: On the same 7/1 that’s the first German Unity Day and maybe the last Canada Day, a guy pitches a complete-game no-hitter but loses the game on walks and fielding errors. The best part is that it happened to that traditional team-you-love-to-hate, the Yankees. (I personally have nothing against the Yanks, reserving all my booing for those bloated, spoiled-rotten Dodgers.)

ALSO ON THE SPORTING FRONT, ’twas nice to see the Goodwill Arts Festival proportionately outsell the Goodwill Games, as I predicted in my Ins/Outs for ’90. It fulfills Jim Bouton’s remark at the end of Ball Four about Seattle, “Any city that cares more for its art museums than its ball park can’t be all bad.” The Games themselves are, if nothing else, the biggest production ever made specifically for cable TV. Ted Turner’s investment works out, per hour of air time, to a little less than the cost of big-three prime time programming (though, unlike those shows or the colorized Knute Rockne Story, the Games will have little rerun value). And this UW grad just loved seeing video footage of the McMahon and McCarty dorms turned into an exotic Athletes’ Village. The record should also note that Lamonts cleared out official T-shirts and souvenirs at 25 percent discount over a week before the opening.

WHAT PAPER D’YA READ?: Tacoma News Tribune front-page headline, 7/9: “Bush: No Soviet bailout.” P-I front page, same day: “Bush will offer aid to Soviets.”

THE FINE PRINT (from a Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine French bread pizza box): “Stouffer’s prefers conventional oven preparation. When time is a factor, enjoy the convenience of microwave cooking in the microwave sleeve.”

JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: Metro Joe is a little carton of milk, coffee and sugar (for the Latte flavor) plus cocoa (for the Mocha flavor, much like Nestlé’s Quik with a kick)…Madelena’s Masterpiece Calzone, made by Madeline Peters of Redmond, is a pouch of frozen pastry that rises to twice its height in the oven. Inside is “over a cup” of cheese and just a “flavored-with” quantity of pepperoni.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Bellevue Journal-American, under its new Hawaiian owners, has adopted the slogan “The Eastside’s Community Newspaper.” This is more than just an excuse for not having the relatively thorough coverage of the Seattle papers. Its local coverage emphasizes a small-town-paper notion of “community affairs.” A lot of the miniscule news hole is given to large-type PTA listings, obituaries, birth notices, and police-fire-court records. (“Someone took a ring in a towel at the Seattle Club in the 10400 block of N.E. 8th St. Saturday while the victim was working out…The window of a car parked in the 200 block of 98th Ave. N.E. was smashed out Friday. Sometime the night before, someone smeared toothpaste on the same car and the victim believes the two incidents might be related…A resident of the 15400 block of S.E. 11th St. reported getting a number of nuisance telephone calls in which the caller said nothing. On Saturday alone, the victim received 15 to 20 calls.”) These notices help Eastsiders believe they’re in the country atmosphere they thought they were moving into, instead of an almost continuous mass of tract houses and strip malls with a total population close to that of Seattle itself.

AD OF THE MONTH (in Vanity Fair): “Mercury Capri. Think of it as a steel bikini.” I know it sounds uncomfortable, but it’s still better than the commercial by NY area Pontiac dealers with images of a Japanese takeover of famous U.S. landmarks, while a narrator warns: “Go ahead, let it happen. Buy a Japanese car.” If the domestic-car dealers had cars you would want to buy without having your patriotism questioned…Weekly classified, 7/25: “Frustrated? We need five people w/leadership and mgmt. ability. Must desire exceptional income. Unique oppty. with natl. company formed to help end world hunger.”

CENSORY OVERLOAD: The Stalin wannabes of the censorship movement are all wrong about art and human nature, but very astute in picking targets. 2 Live Crew was chosen for persecution because they’re black and (like last year’s harassment target, Jello Biafra) self-published. The simple truth is that much second-rate rap is, like all second-rate rock, about sexual posturing. Early rocker guys tried to impress girls; rap (and metal) guys try to impress other guys with boasts of their prowess. (Andrew “Dice” Clay is even worse. With pre-pubescent backwards logic, he “proves” his manhood by having nothing to do with women.) It’s occurring when most areas of society, including mainstream pop music, are more co-ed than ever. (First-rate rap and metal, meanwhile, is about fighting for identity in the hostile terrain of corporate culture.)

SOUTH END STORY: The good news is that Sears’ 1st Ave. location (the company’s oldest extant store) is staying open, even though the upstairs catalog warehouse is becoming office spaces. The bad news is that I missed the laser light show held at some of the suburban Sears outlets (newspaper ads promised “a surfer flying out from a giant washing machine…Larger-than-life images will dance over you, around you and across the Sears store”).

DID YOU SAW WHAT I SAW?: The BC government, finally becoming concerned about public-image effects of its industry-at-any-cost philosophy, is spraying grass seed from helicopters over massive clear-cut areas near the coasts of Vancouver Island, so they’ll not look ravaged from tourist boats. This sort of environmental make-believe is not likely to fool many, and can at best postpone a full backlash against the province’s rapid growth. That backlash may turn ugly if it gets racial (the nervous rich of Hong Kong are among the most visible of today’s BC investors).

THE UNBEARABLE LITE-NESS: Mathis Dairy of Decatur, Ga. is planning a new cholesterol-free “milk product,” nonfat milk withvegetable fat added to simulate 2-percent milk. Ice cream-type desserts with the “fake fat” Simplesse are now out; a similarly-engineered fake milk will presumably follow. There’s even Spam Light now!

FROM THE LAND OF NANAIMO BARS: For years, there have been lighthearted legends of an “Ogopogo” Monster allegedly living in depths of BC’s Lake Okanagon (one of the names I always loved to hear on the Vancouver Francophone radio station); now, researchers hired by a Japanese TV crew claim to have spotted the long, thin creature on sonar. Somehow, I can’t give this any more credibility than the mysterious “field circles” appearing in the English countryside (since proven to be a hoax).

MAYBE JAGGER’S NOT A TOTAL HAS-BEEN: The Rolling Stones were playing Wembley Stadium, in a rare concert appearance in their former homeland, on the same night of the crucial England-Germany World Cup soccer semifinal. As fans, cheering and booing to their Walkmen and portable TVs, began to boo the disallowing of an English goal, the band struck up a rousing rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” .

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (Times letters column, 7/24): “Children are not the same as a BMW or Cuisinart.” Higher maintenance costs for one thing, and no warranty…

UPDATE: The CBC lives on Seattle cable, at least on TCI Cable. The cable giant backed off from plans to drop the respected Canadian network after a deluge of calls and letters, resulting in a long, apologetic newspaper ad. TCI went ahead with plans to bring back the Rev. Pat Robertson’s CBN (renamed The Family Channel), subject of an intense lobbying campaign to TCI by Robertson followers; the move shuttled Black Entertainment Television to daytime-only status, to the highly vocal displeasure of many viewers. Viacom, meanwhile, is planning its own channel overhaul. This is likely to last a while. As they say on CNN, the news continues. (Remember when there were only six stations to watch, and two of them weren’t even on in the daytime?)

CATHODE CORNER: The KCTS miniseries Free Ride was similar (but not really that close) to a series a Misc. subscriber and I have been trying to sell, but that’s not the only reason I liked it. Its segments on local “unique personalities” showed much more respect for their subjects than you find in segments like them at the close of local newscasts. It did, however, get cloying in the linking segments involving a comedienne-cab driver, and it did give quite a ride to Puget Sound Bank, which paid partly for the four-part show and in return got its branches driven past quite a bit…KING’s Seattle Today is now carried on The Nostalgia Channel, a national cable network not carried locally. This may explain why the show seems to have less local-oriented stuff these days, and more traveling book-pluggers and beauty-makeover artists.

LET US MAKE A PLEDGE to meet in September; ’til next we meet, be sure to visit the Pure Manifestation health food store in the beautiful Madrona district, see The Unbelievable Truth, read Kitchen Sink Press’ comic-book collections of a nasty little strip calledSteven, and remember these words in Moby Dick that don’t make it into most adaptations: “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than with a drunken Christian.”

PASSAGE

Vaclav Havel, in Disturbing the Peace: “It’s important that human life not be reduced to stereotypes of production and consumption, but that it be open to all possibilities; it’s important that people not be a herd, manipulated and standardized by the choice of consumer goods and consumer television culture…It is important that the superficial variety of one system, or the repulsive grayness of the other, not hide the same deep emptiness of life devoid of meaning. “

REPORT

As you can see, the advertising threatened last time is still not here yet. Something has entered my life (someone, actually), leaving me without the time to hustle for sales. Anyone interested in advertising in the bottom space on this page may contact me at 524-1967 (days) or at the subscription address.

My long-announced novel The Perfect Couple will be available in a limited-edition trade paperback as soon as I can find a publisher or an appropriate self-publishing bid (184 pp., white stock with 2-color smooth card stock cover, perfect bound, 8.5″ x 5.5″).

WORD OF THE MONTH

“autonomasia”

6/90 Misc. Newsletter

Look Out, Tuna Boats!

The Incredible Mr. Limpet’s Got A Gun!

Welcome back one and all to the fourth anniversary (and still ungraduated) edition of Misc., the essential news source for all local“Posties” (a term used in a silly KING report about all of us who are postmodern, posthippie, postpunk, etc.).

UPDATE: The Blue Moon Tavern lives; while the shell of the old Rainbow Tavern next door will be sacrificed to luxury condos. In the midst of all the fuss, developer Scott Soules (a bystander in the dispute) said about the western U-District, “The area is prime for redevelopment.” Tell that to the folks who lost affordable housing to massive apartments supported by steel posts over ugly street-level parking, or to anyone driving on NE 45th during Safeco rush hour.

AXL ROSE MARRIES DON EVERLY’S DAUGHTER: “How we gonna tell your pa?”

LOCAL BOOM #1: The 10th anniversary of Mt. St. Helens was a lot of fun. I know full well that the eruption killed 57 and could have killed hundreds more. Still, seeing the old blast footage on the endless TV retrospectives brought back fond memories of a spectacular, exciting event that affected most everybody here. My memories are also all tied up with general memories of 1980, a year when it began to look like things were getting hopeful in music, in fashion, in world affairs (the start of Solidarity, the fall of Somoza) — until the end of the year brought the rise of Reagan, the fall of Lennon, and all the stupidity that followed. Now it’s another “zero year,” and things are again looking cautiously hopeful in most areas of the world culture (except, for now, in U.S. partisan politics). This time, let’s hope it sticks. (Also loved a Spokane candy firm’s chocolate mountain with a powdered-sugar middle that you can “erupt” with a tiny plastic air pump.)

LOCAL BOOM #2: In 1980, Seattle was still (mistakenly) perceived by many people here and elsewhere as some backwater burg, an overgrown town instead of a city. Some loved the image, some hated it, but few disbelieved it. But in 1990 I’m preparing myself for the expected onslaught of Northwest Chic. Twin Peaks has turned a tiny cafe seen in two minutes of the first show (re-created in an LA studio for later episodes) into a tourist/reporter mecca. It’s going to get worse when the show appears in Europe (at last word, UK documentary crews were still prowling the streets of Dallas for anything reminiscent of J.R.). After that, throw in all the national hype over the local coffee, those flashy local sportswear companies like Generra and Nike, the Nordstrom labor flap that still helps publicize Nordy’s “uniqueness,” the increasing sight of local landmarks in national car commercials, the acclaim over local cartoonists, rappers and thrash-rock bands, and a certain upcoming cable-TV sports event. Responding to this and other activity, Newsweek almost opened a Seattle bureau this past winter, but then decided to save its money. Can such a sparsely-peopled region (only 10 million including B.C.) deserve or survive much more limelight? Well, that’s more people than N.Y.C. and much more than other places that get far more attention in the U.S. as a whole, places like Nicaragua and Israel, so why not let it be our turn (preferably without warfare).

CATHODE CORNER: While the eruption footage on the St. Helens TV specials still looked spectacular, some of the news tape from the weeks before the blast was washed out and bereft of many “scan lines”. Will current video footage last? When high-definition TV comes along, will current video images look so bad in comparison that they’ll be retired from common viewing? If so, that’d make filmed shows and news footage from the ’50s and ’60s eternal but leave taped stuff from the ’70s and ’80s to rot. The Beverly Hillbillies would live forever, while Married With Children becomes a trivia question. Many shows now shot on film are still edited on tape, and would also look decidedly low-definition on HDTV…. Graham Kerr is taping a new syndicated series at KING. The ex-Gallopping Gourmet still lives in Tacoma, across town from the Frugal Gourmet’s house.

AD VERBS: Those spots touting Puget Sound Bank as the last home-owned big bank also display an anti-city bias. The outside-owned banks are represented by urban scenes of LA, SF, Portland and NYC (for Key Bank, actually based in Albany), while the narration about the good home boys accompanies country and suburban scenes….The Home Club hardware warehouse stores are running commercials with The Addams Family theme song (“Yes!, I wish they said, “your house can look just like theirs!”)….Those cable commercials for Mace for women, in tasteful pocketbook-size applicator cans, exploit fear of the opposite-sex, opposite-race stranger in the parking garage (while most violent crimes against women are actually done by acquaintances).

THE FINE PRINT (small sign posted in downtown library): “Title Change: Switch Fund Advisory has become Mutual Fund Investing.“

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Tina is the typewritten/photocopied journal of the Church of Tina Chopp in Bellingham. It’s a variant on the Church of the SubGenius fun and games, built around the “Tina Chopp is God” graffiti that was everywhere in B’ham and Seattle in the early ’80s. Like real churches, it has a detailed philosophy and an us-vs.-them demarcation (in the “Tinite” worldview, to “go Safeway” is to become that most unforgivable of sinners, a suburbanite). Don’t expect any facts about who Tina Chopp is or was (various rumors peg her as a male WWU student’s unsuccessful love pursuit or as a Seattle rock groupie). If you’re really out there, please write and tell us the true story.

Latter-Day Note: On 9/28/99, I received the following email:

the little blurb about The Church finished with the request “If you’re really out there, please write and tell us the true story.”

now i realize that this article was originally written in 1990, and someone may have directed you towards our web site since then (it has been online since 1995), but if not, you can read “the true story” for yourself at http://www.aa.net/cotc/

if you would like any further information about the church, please feel free to write.

Praise Tina Chopp!

Rev. Guido S. DeLuxe, DD, LDD, OGG, OHS, ST, MSU

High Priest – The Church of Tina Chopp

deluxe@marijuana.com — http://www.aa.net/cotc/

CUCKOO’S NEST CUISINE: Officers at the Oregon Correctional Center in Salem can now resume their experiment in disciplining inmates while reducing waste. A state appeals court ruled that Nutra Loaf, baked ground leftovers served to disobedient prisoners, was not cruel or unusual punishment.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Envir-O-Mints are little chocolate mint wafers from Seattle’s Environmental Candy Co. Each mint is stamped with the image of a different endangered species; each wrapper also holds a tiny photo-card of another threatened animal, plus an address on the back for your own Wildlife Action Kit (free) or Endangered Species T-shirt ($3 and 20 wrappers).

IN A JAM: Like most tots in the (then) farm and sawmill town of Marysville, I served my penance as a summer strawberry picker at Biringer Farms, a large operation that sold fresh fruit to traditional wholesale markets. It also had a U-Pick operation and shortcake stands at county fairs. Now my past has risen, in the form of a Biringer store and shortcake stand in the Pike Place Market. Besides breakfasts and desserts (with local fruit when in season), it sells its own new line of gourmet jams, fruit taffy, honey, tea, cocoa, dessert pasta, rum cake, and “Ecstasy” ice cream toppings. They package many of the items in gift sets; they take mail, phone, and fax orders. I know they had to do something like this or lose the farm to tract houses. Still, there’s an ol’ loss-O-innocence about it all, like a nice homely old building “restored” with gaudy paint.

PHILM PHACTS: The most belovedly odd hit of this year’s Seattle Int’l Film Festival could be The Documentator, a 3.5-hour Hungarian orgy of re-cut video (action and sleaze films, TV commercials, socialist economic speeches), interspersed with the story of three people illegally amassing western currency by selling pirated videocassettes. This decidedly peculiar attraction sold out (though several dozen left the Harvard Exit at the start of hour 3).

SONIC DOOM?: It’s quite appropriate that Barry Ackerly’s proposed basketball arena, for which city taxpayers would directly and indirectly bribe him not to move the Sonics, is on the site of a former railroad yard, near the old terminus of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific. These and other lines received massive tracts of free land by the U.S. government and decades of virtual land-transportation monopoly in their operating regions, in return for “opening” the American west to white settlement.

BORN TO HUSTLE: Convicted swindler Ivan Boesky has deducted his fines from his income tax, and even bribed fellow prisoners to do his laundry. Did he ever see the last scene ofThe Producers ?

CENSORY OVERLOAD: Dennis Miller got to perform at the White House, but all his jokes were pre-screened for questionable content (can’t have any obscenities in earshot while you’re working on strengthening our friendship with the Chinese government). Locally, the King County Arts Commission put part of an exhibit in its upstairs Smith Tower gallery behind black butcher paper, later replacing that with a partition. The hazardous image? A male nude.

O NO CANADA!: My favorite foreign country may be irreversibly headed toward dissolution, yet the U.S. media virtually ignore it. If the confederation fails, will it be considered a sign of the inherent weakness of the North American capitalist system?…In lighter news, the new Toronto Skydome has hotel rooms overlooking the stadium, where one guest couple made their own show with the curtains wide open during a Blue Jays/M’s game.

UNTIL OUR NEXT EXCITING CHAPTER, get all the plastic postage from cash machines that you can (bound to be a collector’s item), avoid the espresso bar at University Ford (inferior lattes fail to protect against thermal breakdown of viscosity), get those neato Graffiti Gear jackets that you can decorated with marking pens then wash clear, see the Russian constructivist art at the Henry Gallery, and join me in celebrating the 25th birthday of the Lava Lamp.

PASSAGE

Author-social critic Barbara Ehrenreich (Fear of Falling ) in New York mag: “I left my exercise session after I’d only done one leg. I risked asymmetry.”

HYPE

The Weekly seems to like Misc. “The best one-page read in town,” sez their Bruce Barcott. All Weekly readers are invited to subscribe to Misc. this month for $6 and get a bonus sample from my forthcoming novel. Age, height, race not important.

WORD OF THE MONTH

“Optative”

HOW OFFICIAL ARE YOU?

In order to be a true Goodwill Games fan,

you must consume as many Official Products and Services as you can.

Use this handy checklist.

5/89 ArtsFocus Misc.

PENTAGON BRASS PREDICT

GLASNOST WILL FAIL

(THEY CAN ONLY HOPE)

Here at Misc., where we’ve always brought disparate elements together, we don’t understand this “cold fusion” fuss. As a scientific discovery, it’s far less important than the new technique to remove old tattoos with lasers.

With this installment, Misc. has graced Seattle’s more open-minded restaurants, theatres and retailers for three years. That’s longer than the Ford Administration or the original run of Star Trek! Alice Savage, who ran what was then the PR paper for the Lincoln Arts Association, said I could write anything I wanted to. As ArtsFocus has grown under Cydney Gillis into this fiercely-independent sheet, that policy’s stayed. Another policy iterated in the first edition still holds: This column does not settle wagers (not that we’ve been asked to).

Eat Your Heart Out, Updike: The Brasil restaurant on 1st showed scenes from the latest Rio samba parades as part of its Sunday-night film series. Among the 18 “schools” (each with at least 3,000 amateur performers) were several save-the-rainforest parades and one in honor of Brazilian author Jorge Amado (Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, et al.). Can you imagine giant floats, musicians, singers, children, feather-headdressed men and topless women parading for a living American writer? Brazil has serious problems, but at least it has people who actively participate in their own culture.

This participation is largely what Abbie Hoffman fought for. During his heyday and on his death, the media’ve depicted him as an ego freak, no more sincerely subversive than John Belushi. (The radicals who really were ego freaks became Republicans.) Hoffman’s `68 Demo Convention protest and his square-people-bashing at the subsequent trial might have set back support of the anti-war movement, letting Nixon and Reagan vow to protect “real Americans” from “those kooks.” Still, especially in his books, he had much to say on real democracy vs. money-power whoring and how folks must stop being easily led.

Dead Air: KJR’s resident reactionary Gary Lockwood became Millstone Billboard Man #2, standing in a giant “coffee cup” downtown for an airshift (if I only had some tomatos to throw, some ripe, young tomatos). Lockwood’s “those kids today” commercials, denouncing anything recorded since 1970 and anybody born since 1950, are just like the Mitch Miller/Lawrence Welk defenders during the so-called “classic rock” era. To think KJR was once co-owned by Danny Kaye, who worked to bring attention and respect to youth. Also on the retro beat, the speculating Floridians who bought into Seattle radio promptly sold KZOK (to KOMO) and KQUL, née KJET (to Viacom’s KBSG). I’m heartened, though, by the formation of an anti-nostalgia lobby, the National Association for the Advancement of Time. Corporate America’s obsession with 1956-69 resembles the religious “Age of Miracles” doctrine, in which great things are said to have really happened but cannot happen anymore. The only way to really preserve the spirit of the ’60s is to stay fresh, to live in what Flip Wilson called “what’s happenin’ NOW.”

Update: New Cannon Film owner Giancarlo Parretti’s bids for the New World and DeLaurentiis studios collapsed. Maybe he should’ve sent Chuck Norris to see some dissident shareholders.

Local Publications of the Month: Twistor is a “hard science fiction” book by UW prof John Cramer, in which a machine in the UW Physics Bldg. becomes the portal to a parallel universe…. Lawrence Paros’s The Erotic Tongue is back in print. The area’s foremost expert on word origins (and briefly the best columnist in the P-I) gives fascinating histories on our terms for sex and/or love.

Cathode Corner: Rude Dog, the T-shirt mascot owned by Frederick & Nelson’s David Sabey, will have his own Sat. morn cartoon on CBS this fall (produced by Marvel)…. Bombshelter Videos resurfaced on KTZZ, where even Soundgarden’s an improvement over get-rich-quick and save-your-hair “shows.”

Ad of the Month (on a 76 banner): “Our three unleaded gasolines: Cleans fuel injectors best.” Runner-up (in the N. Seattle Press): “Since 1984, Gibraltar Savings: Serving families for over 100 years.” Then there was the Ross Dress for Less clearance ad with the “Men’s” listings printed between the jumping female model’s legs.

News Item of the Month (Times, 4/22): “A letter writer suggests that car-pool lanes should be open to cars with two drivers.” Let’s hope they’re driving in the same direction.

Politix: Veteran ad man David Stern, whose mom’s on the county council, is running for mayor. His best qualification is having invented the Happy Face, the quintessential politician’s stance. (It’s also become a symbol of neo-psychedelia, ironically since he made it to give Univ. Fed. Savings a wholesome family image in contrast to the image of the U-District in `69)…. Let’s try to get this straight: Our state’s Tom Foley’ll be House Speaker if Jim Wright has to quit over moneymaking schemes, including his wife’s unspecified work for our state’s Pacific Institute (the success-seminar outfit whose payroll also includes Emmett Watson and legend-in-his-own-mind DJ Bob Hardwick). It’s almost as juicy as the discovery of a real Texas oilman named J.R. Ewing, implicated in the Iran-Contra cash flow. After involving so many guys with cartoon names (Casper, Poindexter, Felix), it’s fitting the scandal include other parts of the American mythos.

Junk Food of the Month: White Castle Frozen Burgers. After following the elaborate heating instructions (involving foil and paper towels), you get something that looks and vaguely tastes like the food at an East Coast restaurant chain of undeserved reputation…. WSU’s launching a “distinguished professorship in fast food management,” underwritten by Taco Bell.

‘Til June, wear lotsa Parfum Bic, visit the Speakeasy café on Roosevelt (latter-day note: No relation to the later Speakeasy Cafe in Belltown), and try to be patient during the remaining 14 months ’til the Goodwill Games.

11/88 ArtsFocus Misc.

DATE OF FIRST STORE XMAS DISPLAY

SIGHTED THIS YEAR: 9/20

begin our November Misc., here’s a no-prize trivia quiz: Name the only major Seattle-based bank that hasn’t changed name or ownership since ’81. Answer below.

I’m writing this, and some of you’ll read it, before 11/8. If you consider yourself a progressive but don’t vote, you’re doing just what the Right hopes you’ll do. In any case, this was last big TV election. As viewership declines and diffuses, media campaigns’ll give way to grass-roots politics, a return neither party’s ready for. The society’s already changing (perhaps not as quickly as I’d like) from that mythical Great Unwashed to a more diverse, active populace. You see it in Tracy Chapman and Suzanne Vega topping the charts, in a peacetime peak in campus activism, in cultural events outdrawing sports at the box office (though sports still get more beer money). Politicians don’t see it, nor do polls weighted to emphasize “likely voters” (to demographically match ’84 Reaganites).

My Kinda Town: Was recently in that mecca for all column lovers, Chicago, a town with many Seattle ties despite the wresting of Seattle’s Westin and Frederick & Nelson from their old Chicago owners. Generra, Union Bay, Shah Safari, Egghead Software, Starbucks and Eddie Bauer (in a store right under the elevated-train tracks) are strongly represented there. Their baseball teams lose as often as the M’s, but at least they (especially the Cubs) still know to put on a great show.

Junk Food of the Month: Hostess Mini-Muffins, spongy little mouthfuls in six muffiny flavors including blueberry. They’re even microwaveable (but not the foil bag they come in). Their slogan: “Tradition You Can Taste.” Some of their ingredients: Guar gum, xanthan gum, sodium stearol lactylate, sorbitan monostearate and calcium acetate.

Cathode Corner: Sure missed Jim McKay during the Olympics. If Dick Clark could have shows on all three networks at once, couldn’t McKay be on two?… Despite Ted Turner’s rush to colorize his cinematic booty (partly to gain new copyrights on the films, which start going public-domain in 15 years), his TNT channel shows how beautiful black-and-white can be with the best prints. Tugboat Annie, the only golden-age feature made in Seattle, is stupendous in crisp 35mm.

Dead Air: For the record, KJET was sold to out-of-staters and promptly replaced by the area’s sixth oldies station. DJ Jim Keller’s still on the payroll, researching the potential of new music via “pay radio” (envisioned in the ’50s by my idol, comic Stan Freberg) using cable or FM sideband frequencies a la Muzak. Backlash sez management mercilessly killed it by suddenly ordering a switch to the station’s infamous tape system, preventing on-air goodbyes. The real blame goes to the GOP-controlled FCC, for letting stations be bought and sold for pure speculation and run with no commitment to anything except a quick buck.

Mobil 1, Washington 0: There’ll be no more Mobil gas stations in the Northwest as of next year, ending a history going back to the General and Gilmore (builder of Washington’s oldest refinery) brands, bought up by Mobil back in the ’50s. I guess we didn’t watchMasterpiece Theater enough. Old Pegasus will still fly, however, on classic signs at the General Petroleum Museum on E. Pine and an Edmonds antique store.

For better or worse (probably, I reluctantly say, for better), Seattle changed forever the day Westlake Center opened. It’s architecturally flawed (and the big sign on the top level has got to go), but has a few nice stores and is a great gathering place. The mall, more “intimate” than suburban malls (less non-revenue-producing corridor space), was stuffed w/manic shoppers the first days; the only calm people were the Living Mannequins. In the 12 days the mall was open but Pine St. wasn’t, people got to the mall and other shops just fine, thank you. There’s no proven reason to let cars back on that block.

News Items of the Month: BrightStar Technologies of Bellevue’s selling computer software with “the next step toward true artificial intelligence.” Accept no imitations… KPLU reported a “multiple car semi accident” on 10/21. Does that mean somebody might have meant to crash?… Fame, a new mag started by ex-Interview staffers, touts sheer and see-thru fashion as the return of a classic style. Unlike the miniskirt, nobody’s likely to turn this classic into a business suit.

Local Publications of the Month: Woodsmen of the West, a 1908 Canadian novel just now released stateside by Seattle’s Fjord Press, is a lively tale of logging, shipping and drinking on the B.C. coast…. Inside Chess, a biweekly from local grandmaster Yassar Seirawan, is the biggest attempt in years at an independent U.S. chess journal. For those with at least a moderate interest in the game’s inner workings.

The Plane Truth?: Uncredited, unsubstantiated claims in the press posit that sick Boeing workers may just be stricken by “mass hysteria” and not by the admittedly-harmful chemicals they work with. I thought we were past the time when managements could just plant the company line into papers.

Frame-Ups: The best things at the Pacific Northwest Art Expo were in the WWU booth: instructor Tom Schlotterback’s small surrealist oils. “Woman Menaced by Rodent” and “Genuine Candy-Striped Jesus Christ” looked even greater than they sound.

Which Came First?: Univ. Way now has restaurants called China First and New China First. (They could have called the new space China Second, but that ‘d be a throwback to the old Two-China Policy.)

Fatty Deposits: Rainier Bank should’ve changed its name back to National Bank of Commerce; instead it’s another variation on “California Carpetbagger Bank of Washington.” I had a temp job on the 13th floor ( they dared to have one) of the Rainier Tower, in the international dep’t. (closed by the Calif. owners). This job was during the big ’85 snow; female employees who couldn’t get home that night were put up in a hotel and given X-large Seahawk T-shirts for sleepwear. (Trivia answer: Washington Mutual.)

‘Til December, send in your suggestions for our In-Out list, don’t buy Adidas cologne (advertised as “The Essence of Sports”), pay homage at G. Washington’s stained-glass portrait at UW Health Sciences (with “What, Me Worry?” inscribed in Latin at the architect’s orders) and heed the words of novelist Judith Krantz: “Dan Quayle is the sort of man who, if he were in a Theodore Dreiser novel, would get the girl pregnant, take her out in a rowboat and throw her overboard.”

12/87 ArtsFocus Misc.
Cheer Our UW in the
Mediocre-Team-From-Big-TV-Market Bowl

INTRO: Welcome to a special condensed version of Misc., the column that hated yuppies long before USA Today said it was in to hate them. Yes, it’s now officially OK to say there must be something more to life than greed, smugness, defiant immaturity, emphatic bad taste, and all those other model behaviors modern society’s been encouraging us to aspire to. More on this as we go along.

FASHION: Don’t let your friends think you foolishly paid $30 for that new shirt or top (especially if you did). A common office paper punch will turn you from a fashion victim to a wise consumer by adding that “cut-out look” seen in the best clearance stores…. Themini-skirt look, spawned by designers determined to rip-off teen street fashion into a product for older (richer) women, shows a generation finally coming of age in terms of attention from the marketing culture, the dreaded Yups finally getting their comeuppance. O how great this spring will be, with all these self-proclaimed “grownup children” embarrassingly walking around trying to look like real kids.

UPDATES: Have heard the PiL song “Seattle” a few more times and like it much more…. I said The Bon would never revert back to “Bon Marche” (meaning “cheap” in modern French) under its new French-Canadian owner. It is. It’s also replacing Seattle’s last bargain basement with a floor of gaudy boutiques as part of a massive remodel, set to be done by the 1990 centennial of its first store at 1st and Cedar — a building slated to be razed for Yup apartments.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Tunnel Times is Metro’s weekly newsletter of tunnel-construction progress, tunnel trivia and advance word of the next street closures. Free at the tunnel info stands outside the Courthouse and Frederick’s. Note that I used no puns about “underground newspapers.”… Emmett Watson’s Lesser Seattle Calendar goes beyond the one-joke concept of Watson’s old anti-tourist columns into a nifty little collection of Seattle history and folklore, ranking alongside the works of Murray Morgan and Paul Dorpat in helping establish a common mythology for this, the world’s youngest real city. Only complaint: he doesn’t go far enough in his barbs against developers, now that some of their most diabolical plots are coming true. (The calendar exists because Watson, as a Times freelance contributor, isn’t prey to the paper’s rule against outside work by its regular staffers.)

ECOLOGY: Puget Sound Bank’s promising to donate part of each bank machine fee toward “cleaning up Puget Sound.” The ads don’t say that the money’s really all going to a documentary film about the Sound — a film in which the bank’s bound to get a big plug.

CRIME: At press time it’s too early to tell who set fire to the Strand Belltown Cafe, but activist Bob Willmott has made a lot of enemies, some in very high places. Alternately, could there be any connection with the officially non-arson fire at the Trade Winds?… Kudos to Bill’s Off Broadway restaurant, set to reopen 7 months after a robbery-fire.

ART is certainly not the object of the anonymous (natch) buyer of the Van Gogh for $53 million — many times more than Van Gogh made in his life, even more than it cost to make Ishtar. It’s the ultimate example of the “big boy’s toy” syndrome that’s turned conspicuous consumption into a mass neurosis. In a saner world, at least a portion of any art sale over $10,000 would go into a trust fund for living artists.

MUSIC: CBS sold Columbia Records, the world’s oldest and largest label (founded on patent licenses granted by Edison himself) to Sony. Michael Jackson will not honor his new bosses by having plastic surgery on his eyebrows…. Bono Vox, caught spray-painting on a Frisco fountain, might have had to do public-service work cleaning city buses. If U2 had played here, where they’re saving water by keeping buses dirty, he’d have gotten off.

CLOSE: While you put down your deposit on a home in Japan’s proposed new underwater city, be sure to use John Stamets’sGravity 1, U.W. 0 for all your Xmas cards, read Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality (now at the U Book Store remainder tables), and join us again in the year of piano keys and Oldsmobiles for our second annual alternative Ins/Outs list (send your suggestions in early).